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The inexpensive Aluria Security Center offers solid adware protection, but that doesn't make up for its missing features and low malware-detection rates.
This $40 (as of 4/15/06) package includes antivirus, antispyware, and firewall protection, as well as antispam capabilities and the Active Defense Shield. The Shield is meant to identify and block software exhibiting suspicious behavior on your system, in the critical hours before Aluria can deploy a new virus definition to the suite. Unfortunately, the suite can't scan a custom-defined set of files and folders (standard on all nine of the other security packages we tested in our latest roundup), and it doesn't have parental controls (standard on most of the other suites).
In tests conducted by AV-Test.org, Aluria Security Center ranked second among the ten tested suites in adware detection, a result that isn't surprising given Aluria Software's background in antispyware protection. That's where the good news ends, however. Aluria's suite failed to recognize six boot-virus components and one worm on the WildList, a published list of commonly occurring malware that most other suites detect with near 100 percent accuracy. Aluria's suite also found less than 1 percent of malware hidden within runtime-compressed Windows program files (whereas some of the other tested suites detected more than 75 percent of the files). Since many new malware threats are repacked versions of older ones, a security suite that can't look inside a compressed program is at a serious disadvantage.
The Aluria package is quite slow, as it ranked seventh in conducting an on-demand virus scan. The first scan, in which the Aluria suite indexes your drive, runs the slowest; subsequent scans go faster. (We did not include the first, slower scan in the averaged test results that appear in this product's Test Report.) When we assessed the effects of real-time protection on system performance, Aluria's software ranked last in nearly every test. It caused our WorldBench 5 test application scripts to take anywhere from about 35 percent to 110 percent more time to run than they did without the package installed.
In my experience with the suite, I found the adware and spyware warnings easy to read, but the virus and firewall dialog boxes cryptic. For example, the software alerted me to a file called is-H22PK.tmp, but it could neither categorize the file nor confirm removal. Its firewall dialog boxes couldn't provide a path to the questionable program, either, and they gave me the same generic advice: 'If you are trying to access the Internet, it is recommended that you allow this connection.' Gee, thanks.
Aluria Security Center's solid antispyware component is bundled into EarthLink's Protection Control Center, which the ISP offers to both its broadband and dial-up customers. The rest of the security suite, however, needs work. Aluria says that the package's inability to scan packed files and custom-defined files and folders will be resolved in software updates deployed over the course of 2006. Until then, I can't recommend this suite.
Narasu Rebbapragada
